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January 23, 2009

Feedback, please: What next for Adobe Bridge?

I think the title pretty much sums it up. We have lots of ideas, but rather than lead with those, I’d really like to hear what you want. The floor is open. [PS: When commenting, it would be helpful to know what version you’re using today.] –Thanks, J.

[Update: Wow, thanks for all the great feedback so far. I’m hoping to get a chance to go back in and reply to various comments, but I may end up rolling info into a new post.]

Comments

First and foremost, speed. It takes far too long to start up, and to display thumbnails on a fresh directory. Even though it is multithreaded, it doesn’t seem to use much more than one core when generating thumbnails.[Are you using CS4? –J.]

Maybe some function like what Gridiron Flow is supposed to bring. An easy way to see how al files in bridge are interconnect and maybe notifications about what files are used where.
What I would also love is a way to dump all kind of footage, pictures etc. on Bridge and let it automatically sort it to folders on your drive.
After that you might create a virtual folder for a project to wich you link files, you dump in bridge. Maybe even adding script options for seperate dump folders connected to a project. You could for example automatically let footage be converted to one size or codec for quick editing and let the originals go to a back-up.
Also options to filter files by used in projects or not used would be nice, in the process you end up with a lot of pictures or stuff you don’t use in the end. So a filter to easily recognize what hasn’t been used an can be trashed (or moved).
Whatever it is I would like Bridge to be more then just a pretty picture/movie browser, and maybe getting it more involved in keeping track in what you do with files.
(please excuse my English if it is hard to read or has mistakes as I am Dutch, and new on a Windows PC where I don’t now how to activate spellchecker ;-)

Only partially joking: kill Bridge. Why bother, when there’s Lightroom? I suppose there must be some niche where it’s still better to use Bridge than Lightroom, and I guess it’s nice that it comes with the CS suite, but I for one stopped using it completely when Lightroom was released.

Kreg — 3:41 PM on January 23, 2009

First off, Thanks. Bridge in cs4 is great.
It would be really nice if I could import the custom html web photo galleries that I created for CS3.

Jonathan — 3:46 PM on January 23, 2009

I completely agree that speed should be the priority. I’m using CS4 which is a big improvement but is still sluggish. The only other feature I’d love to see is Flickr integration. Flickr already recognizes keywords I assign my photos in Bridge so why not let me upload them directly like the new iPhoto does?

jesse — 3:48 PM on January 23, 2009

Easily email jpeg previews from any kind of file.
Have the option to auto select the newest file in a folder(in all viewer modes)
Change the speed at which a folder auto-refreshes. (in all viewer modes)

Peter — 3:53 PM on January 23, 2009

On top of my wish list are identical keyboard shortcuts between Bridge/Camera Raw and Lightroom, and maybe some UI concepts like the iTunes-like filtering mechanism from LR could be “synchronized” as well.
Overall, I have the feeling that even though there is a huge amount of overlap between Lightroom and Bridge, similar features are implemented quite differently (web galleries, slide show/fullscreen mode, output module, thumbnail view and preview panel vs. grid and loupe view etc.). I know that Bridge is aimed at a broader audience whereas LR focuses primarily on photographers, but I think that Bridge could learn a lot from LR in terms of streamlining the UI.
Better support for multi-touch gestures would be nice, too.
I’d also love the ability to create my own custom metadata fields directly in Bridge, something like “Client”, “People”, “Approved”, “Film Stock” etc., which should then ideally be accessible and editable from within all Suite applications and in LR.
Another thing is EXIF manipulation, which can be quite useful for tasks like correcting the date if it was set incorrectly on the camera when a photo was taken, to enter capture details for scanned negatives, to selectively remove certain information from images for client delivery and so on.
(Re-)exporting files directly from withing Bridge would also be nice, like right-clicking an InDesign file and choosing “Export to PDF” or doing a “Save for Web” for a Photoshop or Fireworks file.
Hope that’s useful feedback.

Actually, I would really like to see improvements in the BridgeTalk protocol, and it’s exposure in different Adobe products. Being able to send serialized data between different applications using BridgeTalk would be very cool (AMF style). I know SwitchBoard kind of addresses this, but it should be further refined, exposed in many more CS4 products, have more consistent method names, and have better documentation.

John, thanks for giving us the opportunity to comment! It means a lot to have a direct channel into the development of the product.
That said, as far as Bridge is concerned, your team has exceeded my expectations with CS4. All the little things I wished for, it seems that you’ve already added. I do have a few *teensy* gripes and I hope these can be ironed out in the next update:
1. The labeling system has changed a bit, and I wonder why colored labels can’t be consistent with Lightroom? I know that you can change the labels and the use of the control key modifier, but why are they different?
2. The “View items in subfolders” feature used to be enabled with a little icon in the left panel, it is now moved to a menu, which is fine, but it would be nice if there were a visual indicator or reminder that this was on or off.
3. Bridge workspaces seem to have a mind of their own sometimes, can you lock them down a little tighter? :-) The sizes of the side panels, thumbnails, and even whether Bridge opens full screen, all seem to randomly shuffle about once every two weeks or so. For example, my “essentials” workspace seems to want to reset at arbitrary times such that the side panels are about 100 pixels wide.
Again, three tiny complaints and otherwise huge kudos and thanks for an excellent product!! — mh++

Using CS3, evaluating CS4. The biggest thing, from the IT perspective:
Get
Rid
Of
Opera.[We will.In any case, you’ve consistently raised an alarm that the non-updated copy of Opera is a security risk. For that to be true, a customer would have to take the time to install a script that would cause Bridge to display a generic HTML browsing view, after which s/he’d use that view to go cruising from site to site. (In other words, someone would have to modify Bridge to function as their HTML browser.) Know anyone who’s done that? Me neither.Therefore there’s no attack vector via Opera. The code lies dormant except when Bridge goes to one of a few walled gardens (e.g. previewing Web galleries in the Output module). –J.]
Barring that, start updating the friggin’ thing, and cut the email/IRC clients out of it.

Somerset — 5:00 PM on January 23, 2009

1. I’d really like the ability to select the path to folder/file so that I can copy and paste the location to some one else with out having to open the folder in Explorer first. And the ability to paste a folder/file path location in so that I don’t have to browse to a folder on a server and coworker sends me.
There’s a resource on the Exchange that’s supposed to add a bar for this, but I’ve never been able to get it to work.
2. The ability to see thumbnails of multipage InDesign documents, like you can do with pdfs.
3. I’d like the “Show Items from Subfolder” button back, having to go to a panel menu takes too long.
4. When minimizing Bridge, have it disappear to just the system tray, like Outlook does. Restore on double clicking the bridge icon (launch at startup option selected) restores window (maybe right click to choose from list of windows if more than one has been minimized?)
5. Speed improvements so I can better talk my co-workers into using it.
Using Bridge CS4, formerly using CS3 on Windows XP (add I must say that I love all the new features, many of which I wouldn’t even had thought to ask for)

I’d like to see Bridge begin to introduce designers to the concept of version control. I know there’s Version Cue integration, but I think there’s an opportunity to take it a bit further. With Flash Catalyst needing to seamlessly work with a developer in Flex Builder I think Bridge could be a way for a designer to better understand the use of a repository.
Another thing might be integration with Adobe Share. Anything I drop into a particular Adobe Share folder on my desktop could get pushed to Adobe Share on the web. Maybe even a little module that allows for client reviews.
It would also be nice to load remote locations into Bridge, like tutorials from an address Adobe hosts or sample assets.
How about being able to add RSS feeds for content sites like Vecteezy.com?

CS4. Being able to apply more than one keyword at a time. If you click on one keyword while a previous one is being processed then the second keyword doesn’t get added to all the files. You have to wait for the last one to finish being added. Also the ability to add keywords in a none alphabetical order.
Thanks for a great blog John.

1. Float the Preview Panel and move it to another monitor. And if this is already possible then allow us to float the preview panel in the same way we’d float a panel in Photoshop. I’ve tried to do this but I can’t get it to work. even extending the application to my second monitor and making a full-screen preview panel over there has problems: it never renders the preview, just shows “unupdated void” as if it’s out of graphics memory.
2. Option for the “folders” view to just show the folders in the current folder you’re in, with an “up” button, and a “root” (meaning all volumes) button. The tree view of folders is difficult to view; it requires scrolling left/right for any serious work, and the breadcrumb trail at the top is nice but doesn’t show folders in the view you’re in.
Thanks for a great blog and product, BTW
(using bridge CS4)

Extinction.
Remove it.
Put it out to grass.
Take it into the service elevator and shoot it in the back of the head.
It’s an ugly, non-Mac-like, resource-hogging, sluggish, unimpressive annoyance. Use the platform’s metadata and preview facilities. Stop replicating platform functionality whilst ignoring the local infrastructure. Just do what you’re supposed to and stop trying to be an operating system.
Do I sound pissed? Maybe so. Tonight I tried to install Acrobat Pro 8 from the CS3 CDs when I previously hadn’t. I told it not to reinstall the other CS3 apps. Shall I tell you what it did? Or can you guess? IT REINSTALLED OLD VERSIONS OF THE APPS FROM CD EVEN THOUGH I SPECIFICALLY TOLD IT NOT TO.
Then it MADE ME WASTE HOURS letting your USELESS updater download the updates I HAD ALREADY INSTALLED from your zero-bandwidth no -CDN distribution server.
You people seemingly hate your users. You’re incompetent. I am a senior manager in higher education who already hates your company’s idiotic CLP and other volume licenses. If you want to be the new object of hate and contempt after MS, by god you’re going about it the right way.

As always, thanks for offering another forum for feedback – it’s one of the reasons I love using Adobe products.
Onto the feedback – I’m using CS4.
Another vote for speed/small footprint (which is tough when everyone, including myself, also votes for more features. But, I’d give up any new features (unless it was just out of this world) for better speed/smaller footprint).
I would also second the idea for something similar to GridIron. Having a better understanding of how files are connected would be very beneficial.
Ability to page through an InDesign doc right from preview, similar to PDFs.
Geotagging from a .gpx or other similar file
Preview AVCHD files

I’m still on CS3, so take my comments with that caveat pls.
Stability. Stability. Stability. Bridge crashes for me at least once a day. I encounter this problem most often while browsing large image libraries (over 200 images).
Speed.
Multiple windows, tabbed. This would be huge. I have several image libraries I browse regularly and would love to be able to quickly tab between then, transfer files between them and compare images. Even better, I’d love to have both of these windows open next to each other (see Cocoatech’s Pathfinder & the Dual Browswer feature for an example of what I mean).
Actually, the Pathfinder reference is, for me, a key one. When I’m browsing image libraries (lots of jpgs, tiffs, ais, etc. all categorized into different folders) I would love Bridge to feel like a Finder replacement (Apple’s Finder, I mean). It currently has a lot of the basic Finder features but it’s not that flexible when it comes to navigation.
Right-click on an image to copy the path to that image.
Toolbar buttons to change the sort order.
Thanks for asking.
Cheers

Ben — 6:42 PM on January 23, 2009

CS3 Bridge at work, CS4 at home, but anyway at work I do some video editing that uses WMV as source files (because of the the technology platform they’ve chosen) and anyhow, starting up a Premiere Pro project is hard because Bridge won’t tell me the FPS of the video until after I’ve imported it into Premiere and inevitably discover that what I guessed was the frame-rate was actually wrong and so I have to start a new project (because Premiere Pro CS3 doesn’t have an easy way to change the project settings). So being able to see those settings in Bridge before creating the Premiere project would be awesome – after the project is created and the source video has been edited, I can see the Frame-rate via Bridge just fine. Another, perhaps better solution would be to have Premiere Pro have an easy way to change the project settings, i.e. Frame Rate… Obviously this doesn’t have anything to do with Photoshop but that lack of functionality has bitten me more times then I’d like. Definite drag to the workflow. The other issue I had was already addressed in CS4 which was an easy way to grab multiple files and collect and export them as a PDF. The speed could use a bit more optimization – Bridge really should be a highly optimized file browser and metadata read, write, and search tool. Overall I like it and the CS3 version was the first that I started to actually like the application. So you must be doing something right! :-)

Steven /alexander — 7:03 PM on January 23, 2009

Speed is important. Also all the things Lightroom does that Bridge as yet doesn’t. I never liked the LR interface, modules design and find Bridge a much better concept to understand and use. Keeping as many key short-cuts as possible across RAW, LR and Bridge the same would be great.
With all that I really am happy to see the new CS4 Bridge and RAW and use them.

gary greenwald — 7:30 PM on January 23, 2009

id like to see some type of geotagging gps panel with google maps in it, so any chosen photo, if it has gps metadata, it can be seen in a fully-functional panel of google maps (and the selective overlays they offer), then there could be defaults set up for that panel, like default zoom view, default map or satellite view, and such…
and perhaps then a secondary geotagging panel with just the plain text/numbers input boxes or view if its already there.
for now i find geosetter the program to use, but if it were only incorporated into bridge as a panel, that would be great.

Bob Hopfner — 8:04 PM on January 23, 2009

I would like to see some font management in Bridge, access and maintenance on the Adobe font folders and some JTI font installation. Font catalogs with specimen pages in a few optional layouts and even user defined text and/or lorem ipsum.
Batch file renaming could use more wildcards and be able to remove and add bit – although I am in CS3 so CS4 could have that much.
How about putting in a file name and a URL and have it search and store metadata off my stock image service.
cheers,
Bob

Startup speed. Pleeeese. It takes way too long to refresh thumbnails upon startup. I currently us Premiere Elements 6 –seriously, I do. It’s blazing fast and just feels right for the way I manage my photos.

noel — 10:11 PM on January 23, 2009

I don’t use Adobe Bridge. I’m on the mac and prefer to let the OS do the file heavy work. That being said, when I use AE, I hate it when Bridge interrupts my workflow and constantly wants to be updated.
Yes, I turn the preferences off, but somehow the only time I notice bridge is when it is bothering me.
If I wanted that kind of interruption from a browser, I’d use Windows. I’m used to programs doing what I want them to do, not programs insisting I do something (update) for them.

Matt C. — 10:24 PM on January 23, 2009

Speed!!
To me, as a photographer, the most useful function of Bridge is as an editing program. It is more useful than Lightroom than this, IMO, if you can just nail the speed issue! Bridge CS4 on a monster machine still lags when loading previews in a folder full of RAWS.
Seamless second monitor functionality would be super nice, too. Thanks for asking!

Austin Wallender — 10:40 PM on January 23, 2009

CS4 is much better than CS3 in terms of speed and stability, but still not perfect.
I’d love finder style hot keys (cmd-1, cmd-2, cmd-3) to switch between views and syncing favorites with the finder side bar. path finder does both of these – there are probably other features of that app you could emulate.
Also, what about collapsing image sequences into a stack? bonus points to preview the stack a la iphoto or imovie…

Adam — 10:58 PM on January 23, 2009

I’m using CS3.
While as a PC user I was a bit surprised to see Simon Pride above use the term”non-Mac-like” as an insult, I did agree very strongly with his other point: “resource-hogging”.
This program is way too resource hungry, and of course we all need to use the resources for other programs. Bridge should be so light that I can easily run multiple Adobe programs including After Effects in the background with grinding everything to a halt or making things crash.
My use of Bridge has been pretty disappointing over the years that I almost never use it. Once it crashes and slows your workflow your brain quickly files it under the “Do Not Use” category.
Gridiron Flow looks interesting.

I have Bridge CS4 installed, but I don’t really use it.
What I’d like to see in it:

much better speed. It has to be lightning fast even if you have to code it in assembler or dynamically load just parts of it. If it’s not very very fast, people will hate it. Take a look at Picasa or a ton other image viewers & DAMs. Maybe allow users to turn off features they don’t need to improve the speed.
I’d like to see more/better batch operations (format conversion, resizing, etc). I’m currently using ACD See Pro for that.
Better support for keywords. Lightroom got that part right. The tree-structure in Bridge works for few keywords and is less efficient when you need to add a bunch of keywords for pictures that get submitted to stock agencies
I know I’m in the minority, but I use JPEG2000. I archive my original RAWs in DNG format but after editing in Photoshop, I keep files as JPEG2000 as the format gives me 16bit depth at a fraction of the size of a TIFF. I’m using this since many years. Making JPEG2000 supported by default, instead of an optional, old plugin, would really make me happy (I know you asked for opinions on that some months ago).

I’m in education too. Can we find out which school that earlier ranter works at so we don’t send any of our kids there? :-D
I’m using CS4.
1: Metadata fields not be single lines when we type multiple lines, so we can actually see what we’re typing. And if we switch away from Bridge to copy some text out of another program or document, when we switch back to Bridge, the field is still selected so we can start typing again or paste the copied text right where we left off without having to click in the field first.
2: When I save a workspace, save the location of the window so that it goes back to the same space on the screen. If it’s supposed to work that way, it’s certainly not reliable.
3: Spell check in metadata fields
4: Better Applescript support.
5: Make applying profiles for cameras easier and not require we go to a separate panel from the Basic panel to access them. Or give us keyboard commands to switch panels.
6: If there are lots of collections, let us search for them and select them in a panel.
7: Let us modify the size of the folders in the Favorites panel.
8: Scriptable metadata input where can can make it prompt us for a specific field, so we only have to type what it asks for, and hit Enter to go to the next photo in the same metadata field. Such as once we input all the redundant metadata, it cycles through all photos’ Description field so we can type in specific information – and have it append the metadata rather than replace it.

Using CS4 on a MacBook (10.4.11). Speed is not the problem – for me. Just some time for relaxing isn’t as bad! And yes, I’m a bridge “lover” – as like Dave Cross :-)Would be nice:

rework keywords panel, I don’t use it because it’s just … lame – Please! Do it in a way it’s implemented in lightroom 2.
preview-function for PS swatches
preview-function for txt-files (I’m doing some ascii-art)
preview-function for PS shapes
rethink the bridge-home. I don’t use it in the way it works now. Make some bridge-community available in there. Something like acrobat.com.
Or a direct, ingrained connection to the exchange server – in bridge!
customizeable menu (rightside of the bridge icon): a developing button, or just the posibility to use every menu-command there! (*)

Nice in daily workflow (in comparision to CS3):

Space for preview (love it!)
spotlight search
output panel (more costumisation!)
a “save preset” in the output module (or is there one – couldn’t find it by now
collections – great!
breadcrum navigation
like the look an feel

(*)this is a feature I like to see in every other programm too! I don’t like the unused space there! Just right click and “costumize toolbar” ! This would be a killer feature!

Gio — 12:48 AM on January 24, 2009

Using CS4 – and the team have done well. Not quite water into wine, but Bridge’s biggest step forward.
OK, that said, as someone who is almost exclusively a photographer, the next steps forward should be guided by one principle – that no more photographer-only functionality is added to Bridge. If a function is only of value to photographers, and not Flash designers for instance, it shouldn’t get near making the cut for Bridge CS>4 and the feature should be listed for Lightroom. For one thing, Bridge is for all users of the CS suite. Secondly, the more photo-centric functionality you add to Bridge, the less pressure to drive Lightroom forward as quickly as it should be. Force photographers to buy LR, drive up LR revenue and the development costs which it will support.
Second, when will Adobe have the imagination to have a program which covers all media assets, online and offline? I can’t use Lightroom to manage the video of my 5DMkII, let alone all the other file types I accumulate as a photographer – LR’s not a tool for photographers but a tool which is hobbled to the file types which will go into Develop. The tool I can use for all file types, Bridge, is equally hobbled as a glorified Finder which tells me where files are, not where they should be, and remains blissfully ignorant of any offline media. How I wish Adobe had bought iView and added raw processing (and killed off both Lightroom and Bridge).
re Peter’s comment on custom metadata fields, you can do this but need to know how to edit File Info panels. I do think this could be made more human.

Mike Sargent — 12:52 AM on January 24, 2009

Improve the output module so that you can save custom templates, have it retain settings from session to session, also a live preview so don’t have to remember to press the Refresh Preview button.

How about a database? Bridge is an excellent, intuitive asset management app but lacks the sheer grunt to handle serious collections of files. A back-end database would really open up the possibilities and make Bridge an enterprise solution.

Svein — 1:45 AM on January 24, 2009

I use CS3 on Xp Pro (SP3), but I’ve also used CS4 a bit. I’ve noticed the following problems:
1. Bridge hangs fairly often, and almost always if I open two instances for browsing two folders at the same time.
2. Bridge have a problem with refreshing the cache (thumbnails) if I browse a folder and copy files to that folder with another application (like Windows explorer). Emptying the cache solves it, but rebuilding is slow on a folder with many images.
3. It would be convenient with better maker-specific Exif info.

My Top-List:
* Add Designated keys for “next file” and “previous file” (which means: you can keep your mouse on the keywords-panel and just assign keywords, not having to move it over to select the next file (which does not work with up+down arrow since your focus is on the keywords))
* Let there be a fullscreen-preview on a second monitor (great for presentations).
* This fullscree-preview needs to keep showing an image until the next image is selected (my current workaround is a synchronized windows with preview-panel, but this will show a blank screen whenever you switch folders).
* Include me early in the CS5 prerelease program (I already sent Vishal an email about it ;-) )
My Nice to have-list:
* Make the breadcrumbs drop-targets (so i can move files one level up more easily).
* Make the breadcrumb-elements clickable like the path elements in vista’s explorer (showing all the sibling-elements).
* Make File/Folder Paths Copy&Pastable (Somerset said everything on this one a few posts up).
* let us disable all the toolbars.
… well… and speed is always nice to have. :D
To those with comments like “kill it off”:
Hey guys: please do one of the following two things:
* Be quiet
* Start using the bridge for a few days (seriously)
Bridge is a great tool, and it’s not centered around photos alone. I don’t get, why you post those hostile comments against it? I like that it comes with the CS, but i definately think it could be a product of it’s own like lightroom.

I love Bridge and use it all the time. Not having any experience with LR, I can’t really compare the two.
I would love to see a faster startup speed.
The big thing I would like is the ability to add more labels and/or to change the colors/labels within a folder. I use labels more than keywords to quickly find things, and having more flexibility with labels would be a huge help.

karl — 4:49 AM on January 24, 2009

I use CS3, but have seen CS4 too.
First: Speed! Much more speed!
Second: A more flexible user interface, Drag & Drop to/from Windows Explorer a.s.o.

DrWatson — 5:06 AM on January 24, 2009

Please make “Output module” work with InDesign documents. Recently I had to print a bunch of InDesign documents (1 page per doc, not organised in a book). Opening and printing each one separately is a nasty task. Would be nice if Bridge might do this for me.
Additionaly, any performance improvement would be welcomed (Bridge CS4, Mac OS X 10.5).
Also, I’d love to see “Open in Lightroom” an alternative to Camera Raw/Photoshop. It seems like Lightroom is a bit neglected by the rest of CS…

Glenn Harper — 5:31 AM on January 24, 2009

I regard and use CS3 Bridge as a good browsing and keywording program (and was trialling CS4 before it prematurely expired). The only spanners in the works for me are stability, and now auto-alphabetic sorting. Bridge seems to crash on me at least once during every session. Alphabetic keyword sorting becomes an inconvenience for images which are Alamy-bound, where keywords ideally should be placed in order of relevance.

john renfrew — 5:31 AM on January 24, 2009

Both CS3 and CS4, and like the new stuff a whole lot more. But another plea for speed and particularly small footprint.
when you have Bridge, Illustrator, Photoshop, and PowerPoint all open, which I do frequently machines do not take that long to really slow down.
What about colour tagging in the thumbnail view so that when I just have two file types as a filter it is easy to see which is the illustrator file and which is the png I created from it with the same name, rather than having to make me read the little text to see the file extension.
Also the filter/search box top right should behave like the Apple one (PC user here)
where when you clear the search term you do not then have to go back to the breadcrumb to move back to view all files with no filter again.
How about similar open channels for some of the the other products. We all use them in ways the designers never dreamed of and might just have some insights….
Many thanks though

Steve — 6:10 AM on January 24, 2009

The new output module is great…with one important exception. I ocassionally need to print a bunch of 4×6 prints. The new module lacks the flexibility of the old picture package to create a template that’s got 3 pictures per page. Being able to print 30 pictures as three 4×6 prints per page on 10 pages would be a huge timesaver for me.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Trace — 6:41 AM on January 24, 2009

Glad you’re asking for feedback. I may be one of the few who liked Bridge from CS2 on. It finally was a useful feature (compared to the Browser). That said, for me, speed in rendering RAW thumbnails is important (and not just giving us a “Render lower quality thumbnails” as a speed boost!). Overall speed in displaying files/images and other processes (internal Bridge features such as printing). The more you give Bridge the ability to display (play) more file formats, the more useful it will be overall (i.e. show/play audio files MP3, AAC, all video codecs, etc.) Keep working on the speed issues and adding file capabilities, and it will be a true Bridge

CS3 and CS4.
What’s so Bridge about it?
I keep waiting for it to actually be the “hub” of my workflow. Nope.
I would like to be able to manage my CS files, do multiple actions to multiple selections. I’m looking for a FAR more robust set of tools in the Tools menu, which seems to be shrinking with each new version. There should be a fly-out menu with a healthy set of scripts for every CS app the user has installed. There should also me a “meta” tools flyout that can run utilities on a whole pile of different file types in the user’s selection.
Example: I’ve selected 20 files, a mix of ID, Illy, and FW … let me run a command that creates an .ASE of all the named colors in the selection. Let me set filters on the number of/types of colors that will be added.
Example: Use Bridge as the hub for managing scripts and actions in all my CS apps.
I understand Bridge is like the UN and the Bridge team needs cooperation from the other app teams to add functionality for their filetypes and unique features. I’m disappointed that greater headway has not been able to be made. (not even ONE InDesign script in Bridge CS4?)
Perhaps the CS engineers and management team needs to go on a corporate retreat, including a “deep dive” with a family therapist or a UN negotiator. ;-) The title of the retreat: Making Bridge an Actual BRIDGE.

landitus — 7:49 AM on January 24, 2009

I’m currently trying CS4, and this is what I would like to see:
1. Speed, I agree with everybody
2. Font Management. It is amazing how this functionality is nowhere to be found in CS4.
3. Bridge eats Adobe Drive and Version Cue. The result should be all configurable within bridge: like a subversion, for files, asset management and collaboration that’s easier to use that SVN! :) Version control for designers, that is. and bonjour to the mix for asset sharing…

Markus Selbach — 7:59 AM on January 24, 2009

Please make the communication between bridges scripting engine and palettes with HTML/Flash/Flex easier. CS4.swc is a good starting point, but it comes to an end if you allready have your own library and wrapper functions. A shared environment with data visible and modificatable for all technologies whould be great. There is a strong need, to make all the possible extensions visible you can build for bridge. But at the moment it is just hard work :(
Regards from Germany,
Markus Selbach

I would like a way to print a good quality proofsheet from bridge. Sometimes i’m dealing with clients that want to have paper evidence, and the idea if being able to print from bridge, rather than having to create a digital proofsheet in PS is rather important to me.

Speed for the loupe.
Bridge should not “load 100%” to view a 100% loupe section.
It should load just the amount of the image within the loupe area at 100%.
Yes, it would then need to load again if you moved the loupe, but it would be so fast that no one would notice.
For an example of this implementation, see the Leaf digital back software (Leaf Capture). Checking focus on a 60-80 MB file is virtually instantaneous.
Scott

Hi John:
I use Lightroom 2x for most all of my photography work, but for things outside of the Lightroom catalog, I use Bridge CS4 on Mac.
Works great for what I need, I am just not sure why I have these two programs that are almost the same.
I know that LR works on a database and Bridge doesn’t (which is why it is better for random browsing of my hard drive), but it was really obvious from the MAX conference that you guys are not integrating LR into the CS workflow — indeed LR was nowhere to be found.
I guess that would be my request, is that there should be more integration among LR>Bridge>Photoshop.

[Seinberg wrote: “Only partially joking: kill Bridge. Why bother, when there’s Lightroom?”]
Not joking at all, my retort is Kill Lightroom. Why bother with and pay for another application when you have Bridge?

This probably sounds like an absurdity but when reducing the size of a file it would be really useful to be able to preordain the size, dimensions or resolution of the file. In other words, a target files size. In my PC days I used a program called ACDsee and that had a file conversion facility that was quick and easy to use.
Thanks
Richard

ossy — 1:49 PM on January 24, 2009

I’m not yet using CS4, still on CS3, so disregard whatever is in the new version.
Speed and footprint is number one. At the moment, i only grudgingly open Bridge when i feel i really have to, and close it when i’m done, to avoid slowing everything down too much. Also, the wait while Bridge opens is vey annoying for something that is basically a glorified file browser/finder
Working/more stable cache – especially when indexing network drives in environments using roaming profiles. Bridge caching is ‘a bag of hurt’. Make it rock solid, stable and invisible, or don’t bother at all. Right now, there are tons of options that aren’t exactly self-explanatory, or at least don’t seem to do what I expect them to.
Add find/replace to ‘batch rename’. In general, being able to run batch jobs on files from Bridge is very useful.
It would be very useful to see how files are linking/linked to one another, and to have the possibility to fix all affected links if you do something like change the name of a folder or file. And it would also be cool if you could replace links directly from Bridge.

Using CS4, Vista 64.
Things that I would really like to see in Bridge CS5:
More speed: Particularly with large collections. The entire cache process/concept probably needs to be redone.
More DAM: Improve keywording (multiples at once, intergrated controlled vocabulary, etc)
More Stability: I’ve reported already a repeatable bug that will crash Bridge if a folder previously being looked at becomes unavailable (ie a network location).
Genuine Multi-monitor Support: Not just the synchronised windows, but a genuine UI option to support multiple monitors because Synched windows have issues if you close one and then the other rather than closing Bridge from the menu. With synched windows, you also have certain elements that can not be turned off (Content, for example – I really don’t need that on a window if I’m wanting to use it for Preview only). FWIW, this also doesn’t quite work on PS CS4 but it’s much closer.
Simplified Options: Things like managing the cache, for example, need to have simple and user-friendly descriptions about what they really do.
Standalone Installation: A real bug-bear for me at the moment since it’s been having real issues with multi-window and network support and keeps crashing on opening. Attempts to revert to previous versions via the OS worked to a certain extent, but being unable to indivudually install/reinstall/uninstall/repair Bridge without doing large chunks of the rest of the suite is making dealing with fixing the problems far too painful and therefore I’m just not using it (even though it would really help my workflow).
TBH, I’d be using Bridge constantly if I could trust it not to crash. Everything else would be a bonus, but the stability and robustness is what needs real priority I feel.

Love Bridge CS4 -hated Bridge CS3.
John, you guys are on the perfect path with Bridge development. Things I would like to see is better performance on folders with large numbers of files – which is the only slow part of CS4. The cache, prebuilt from a previous visit, doesn’t seem to behave normal (fast cached speed). It is too slow to be from cache. (?)
I have multicore processors and RAID 5 SCSI servers, so that isn’t the problem – also cache to folders set.
I have read all the comments before my post. WOW.
Lightroom users have another solution they have chosen. They really work a different way than Bridge, so I would encourage the Adobe Bridge team to keep plowing on. Bridge CS4 is a joy to use. Many thanks

ok
Bridge rocks. I work with a lot of cr2 files.
I edit a lot of them (in camera RAW) but then have no way to sort by the fact that I have made adjustments… I would love to add this in the drop down list that currently includes things like “date modified” “filename”
right now if I want to export JPGs of the RAW images I made changes to, I have to click one by one holding down the CTRL key as I manually select all the ones I made changes to.
peace. you guys all rock.

it's me again — 9:41 PM on January 24, 2009

using cs4
Previews for: PS swatches, PS brushes (most desirable to me), PS shapes, More Old EPS files
Make it ask me which drive to save thumbnail caches to (countless apps already dump crap into My Documents and have filled my C: while I have almost a terabyte of free space on other drives)
Proper copy/shortcut creation when alt/ctrl dragging from Bridge to Windows Explorer.
A usable address bar where I can paste in the adress of a directory (including locations over the network)
An easy way to copy the path to a directory or file.
Should rethink the appearance of the entire upper right area of the default workspace. It’s unattractive and not instantly intuitive.
Move as many non-essential features as possible into optional, official, Adobe-made, Adobe-supported plug-ins
Don’t try to generate thumbs for EVERY image in the folder. It sucks to accidentally click on the wrong folder (with 800 files) and have bridge hang because it started working on thumbnails you don’t even care about. Don’t generate a thumbnail until the icon of the file is scrolled into view. (This is why I hated about Picasa. Took forever and filled my C: drive)
Ability to drag any preview/panel to any other screen and have it work.
Some questions (I haven’t used bridge much, used to be an ACDSee user (ACDSee is crap)):
Where does meta data/keywords/star ratings info get saved?
Can that data be backed up & restored easily (I reinstall windows a lot)
Can it be restored if the drive letter where my images are saved were changed?
What if I have all my images on an external drive and rate them on my PC. Are the ratings/metadata going to be available when I plug that drive into my mac or reboot in linux?
(ACDSee sucked at most of the above)
I agree with the previous statements about LR being an app for phototographers while Bridge should truly be a useful app for every other kind of person using the wide variety of Adobe apps for various purposes.

Markus Selbach — 12:42 AM on January 25, 2009

Please make the communication between bridges scripting engine and palettes with HTML/Flash/Flex easier. CS4.swc is a good starting point, but it comes to an end if you allready have your own library and wrapper functions. A shared environment with data visible and modificatable for all technologies whould be great. There is a strong need, to make all the possible extensions visible you can build for bridge. But at the moment it is hard work :(
Regards from Germany,
Markus Selbach

Tommi Luhtanen — 2:14 AM on January 25, 2009

Using CS4 at present.
Bridge should at least display, but preferably manage fonts too.
Or/and Extensis and other developers should be encouraged to make plug-ins for making automatic sets and activation.
Bridge is the biggest time saver in my toolbox, but IMHO it lacks typography.
-Tommi

tenaitch — 6:46 AM on January 25, 2009

using cs3 on both mac and xp.
Bridge is too slow to load and too slow to respond to ejecting and connecting external media eg cd’s and cf cards, in fact it often stalls completely.
I would like to see tabbed browsing so i can search several libraries simultaneously and an itunes like, quick way of collecting stuff into ‘compilations’ for specific projects.
Exporting different file types to pdf or web resizing or even some kind of system like Photoshop actions. For example exporting copies of a project to clients via an email would be great.
Also find a way to preview multipage Indesign docs.
When using ACR though bridge why does it insist on being full screen and not a floating window or appear within the Bridge window, that’s just frustrating.
Really though Bridge is so much more useful than LR in environments that are not purely photographic, but LR does have the edge in looks.
Thanks

howard — 7:21 AM on January 25, 2009

I use Bridge CS£ on both mac and XP.
It’s too slow to load and it’s too slow to recognise new cd’s and cf cards when they’re connected and ejected.In fact it often stall completely.
I would like to see something like itunes playlists to make quick collections for projects and a system of Tabbed browsing so I can search multiple folders simultaneously.
With tabbed browsing you could even have ACR open in a new tab which would be much cleaner than it is now and would allow you to add more raw files on the fly.
There is a need to preview multipage Indesign documents and a way of exporting files, as pdf’s or jpegs or even emailing, straight out of the Bridge browser.
Overall Bridge is preferable to LR when the work is not purely photographic but it still lacks the quality look and feel of LR.
Thanks

MAKE IT FASTER
Bridge has almost everything I can want in an image browser apart for from speed of use.
CS4 on XPP(32bt)

Antonio Acuna — 7:31 AM on January 25, 2009

Good to get a chance again to have a say. I am in two minds about Bridge. I actually wonder what is the added value of Bridge over lightroom, or better yet, what is the added value of Lightroom over Bridge. Bridge allows me to see MY FOLDERS, not libraries, which is what I want, my files were I put them, if a new picture goes into the mix, Bridge sees it, no need to import. If I want to make changes to the image (specially working on RAW) I can do just that via camera RAW, with all of the possible adjustments that LR gives me, then go back to my work until I wish to work on the image in photoshop. The loupe is far better than LR and I don’t have to spend my time switching between ‘panels’ which makes LR one of the worst UI I have used. Either bring the best of bridge onto LR and make it part of the suite (as well as stand alone) or kill Bridge if you are going to duplicate functions. LR panel approach is bad, really bad, going back and forth between library and developing is silly. It has bugs such as selecting several files on the film strip while on develop module, hit delete and voila! only one goes, the rest stays. So, please, please, bring the loupe and the file structure of bridge into LR, as well as the lovely info panel on exposure and speed in Bridge. I see no reason for bridge to exists if it does the same as LR and in many cases with a much better flow, much, much better, or the opposite, maybe LR should morph into bridge and go away :-)

chrisNI — 7:49 AM on January 25, 2009

I think Bridge is great I remember when the first version came out i didn’t quite understand it and thought it was worse than the browser that existed before how wrong was that – I’m using CS4 this new one has so many more features I keep finding new ones.
Any way features I’d really like- as has already been mentioned tabbed windows would be great I know you can flip between them with the keyboard but anyway, and some way of customising the web contact sheets (like iView) the current way it outputs is too limited. Oh and as also was mentioned above being able to specify the actual dimensions of a file crop but maybe that’s a Camera Raw issue. This is a great program, even though it crashes a bit often..

Robert Shomler — 8:51 AM on January 25, 2009

Running CS4 win-xp 32
Thanks for the cs4 enhancements: performance, space-bar full screen view, 100% previews and the recent output module update.
Would like a way to remove files and folders from bridge without having them go to the recycle bin. Now I use explorer (Shift-Delete), which leaves bridge cache files for those deleted folders. I have to manually delete the 100% preview folders for these. Left behind they can grow to a lot of disk space.
Present cache size preferences setting is calibrated in items, which does not seem ideal for large 100% preview files. How about a cache size (GB) limit preference setting, for at least the 100% cache folder.

I’m a big fan of Bridge [Currently using CS4/Bridge 3] and have used it since it was calle File Browser and only worked in PS. However there are some places it could do with tweaking.
First thoughts for Bridge 4.0
Improve Cache handling.
Improve Cache handling.
Improve Cache handling.
Improve Cache handling.
Improve Cache handling.
Improve Cache handling.
Oh and did I mention improve caching? ;-)
Also do not change it for each version of Bridge, especially when the changes are negative. Get a decent system and stick to it. Pretty please.
I like to use distibuted cache as there are many potential advantages. Yet now we have a cache system that asks you every single time if you want it distributed, despite having already told preferences that is indeed what you want. Plus it then centralises cache anyway. ?!? How daft is that?
So why do I prefer centralised cache?
The cache is with the images, so if using external hardrives on different computers or on a network and even on DVDs [more limited as it usually won’t update unless RW] you do not have to build a central cache for each computer.
Use centralised cache for storage that you cannot write to, such as CD-R DVD-R etc or flash drives maybe [you decide] to save space. If you archive work on DVDs, then there is sno need to build a cache when looking through an archived disc as the cache is archived along with images. Just like RAW development settings are best kept with files as .xmps or in a DNG wrapper, not in some centralised database.
When you have to purge central cache to sort out cache problems, you do not have to wait days for your 10 years of files to recache. Even with CS4 and it’s vast speed increases, there is a time penalty for caching to occur and if you decentralise cache, you have no need to purge it en masse anyway. When I could decentralise cache in Bridge 1, I never had to purge cache – now I do have that problem.
Decentralised cache doesn’t clog up a single hard drive.
On my Mac I have 6 internal drives and 4 external eSATA drives. This will only increase. I also have 20+ PC Hard drives internal and external, this will also increase. Images take up a bulk of the space and a single cache for all these drives makes no sense at all. Bridge 1 allowed you to distribute cache and it worked pretty well I found. CS2 didn’t and it didn’t work very well at all.
I currently have a mere 900M cache with Bridge 3 and the reason it is so ‘small’, is that I recently had to purge the central cache for some unknown reason and I haven’t rebuilt entire cache again.

John and team,
Thanks for soliciting feedback on Bridge; I appreciate the opportunity to suggest future improvements to Bridge.
I currently use Bridge CS4 almost every day. I use it primarily for viewing, editing, and managing digital photos, but I also use it to view Illustrator documents, and to do some automation work. Bridge CS4 was a huge improvement over CS3, so thanks very much for that!
I’m content with the speed and launch time of the current build; but, of course, it goes without saying that anytime speed and launch time can be improved, go for it.
My suggestions (aka, wishlist) for the next version of Bridge are as follows (in order of preference):
* Better Keyword Handling – a mechanism for assigning and editing keywords that’s at least as good as Lightroom’s.
* Improved “Get Photos from Device/Camera” – a mechanism for importing digital photos/files that’s at least as good as Lightroom’s.
* True Dual-Monitor Support – Bridge really needs better dual-monitor support (e.g., Preview/Slideshow on second monitor, the ability to put panels on a second monitor, etc.). Sure, there’s “Synced Windows”, but it’s a pain to use/set up, it can’t be saved as a workspace, and it’s completely undiscoverable.
* A “Real” Location Bar – as many others (including myself) have previously requested: a location/path bar that permits copying, pasting, and editing the current location/path.
* Dynamic/Realtime Search Filter – the ability to type a few character into a search field and have only files matching that pattern displayed in the Content panel, in realtime (e.g., iTunes search field, etc.).
* Font Support – I’m somewhat reluctant asking for this, as I don’t think Bridge should turn into a full-fledged font manager; however, as an “asset manager” I really would like to be able to at least view all of my fonts in Bridge.
Thanks for all of the great work to date, and I look forward to seeing what the team comes up with in CS5.

An address bar where I can type a file path in. Been hoping for this since CS1 and was really disappointed the CS4 still doesn’t have it. (BTW I do LOVE lots and lots of the new features.)
Something like a “drop stack” for “temporary” favourites. See “Ultra Explorer”. Basic dual pane, multiple file and content panel abilities.
Loads more ideas from some of the file management software out there. (Total Commander, Xplorer2 …)

henrik2000 — 12:12 PM on January 25, 2009

Short excerpt from my wish list:
– Command “Remove all EXIF”
– Command “Remove all IPTC”
– Command “Edit Exif” (esp. time/date)
– Comparison mode like Elements, incl. 100 % zoom on split screen, not only in loupe
– quickly show one or four high-contrast-areas of an image in 100 % zoom to check focus; alternatively show face in 100 % zoom (face detection, a bit like Elements)
– with recent button overload: make button bars customizable (and add button for Photomerge!) (and custom keyboard commands)
– custom names for Favorite folders or files (without renaming the actual folder)
– _copy_ a file in Bridge and then paste it into a file opened in Photoshop
– grid mode without displaying grid lines

Richard Henley — 12:54 PM on January 25, 2009

Using CS4 on multiple Vista x64 systems. My thoughts so far (and I’m sure to have more):
1) Please ditch the web site documentation. Give us back our localy hosted documentation for *ALL* these products and not just as a PDF file. This is my No. 1 ongoing product complaint so far.
2) Export and/or support a File sharing Location for Collections. (I have to do this manually now.)
3) Thumbnail Re-building needs to be kept to a minimum. What’s up with that ?
4) Speed. CS4 is still too sluggish to go directory surfing.
5) Make Multiple Tabbed Folders Available.
6) An Active Folder Path:
a) Paste a vaild path into that display line, and have Bridge open the new folder location.
b) Copy the current Folder Path from that display line, so we can Paste it into Explorer and use that to dig through the folder while Bridge balks with it’s new regenration of thumbnails.
c) A folder history list.

Aimee — 3:27 PM on January 25, 2009

If there’s any way you could possibly add previews for Photoshop brushes, it’d be truly appreciated :-)

VISTA 64 and XP 32 CS3 and CS4
Wishlist:
Tabbed windows
Tools need som InDesign stuff like loading images into a kinda contact sheet (good for quick start product catalogues)
Custom keyboard short cut sets
Interface should be like the other CS4 aps.
Photodownloader should also be able to “rip” a CD/DVD or similar

Give me a reason to use Bridge over iphoto, Aperture, (please please please a reason not to use Aperture), or Lightroom. That would go along way into me using Bridge.

henrik2000 — 10:03 PM on January 25, 2009

– small graphics with each thumbnail visualising relativ file size and histogram or quality (sharpness/histogram/noise ratio)
– somehow point out images with a very good/bad histogram
– upload to Flickr incl to groups and sets there
– and yes, it’s still too slow and i use it only for folders under 100 pics
– print a list of file names without thumbnails

* Make File/Folder Paths Copy & Pastable — this is INVALUABLE for efficiently dealing with files and folders.
In connection with that, I must state that I hate, loathe and detest EVERY damnable “Browse for folder” dialogue in the universe which does NOT allow for typing/pasting a folder path — thus forcing me to mouse-click-drill-drill-drill through endless folder hierarchies! Like the damnable “Browse for folder” dialogue in the Adobe DNG Converter, which makes that app such a PITA to use. So please make sure there are typing/pasting control fields accessible in EVERY window/app/control/whatever which needs folder/file access — this should now really be “GUI 101” for every interface designer in the world. That millions of computer users have no idea what a file path is — and thus waste their and their employers’s time with endless icon-clicking — is no reason to hold us down to their level, we who are not quite so ignorant or willing to work so inefficiently.
In short, I strongly support the others here who have asked for File/Folder Paths Copy & Pastable.

Jim Monaco — 5:56 AM on January 26, 2009

Phew…Lot of comments to read–I wish I’d seen your post earlier, John! I’ve certainly had suggestions for Bridge in the past (I even sent the Bridge team a mock-up image and description for feature revisions about a year ago).
I try to use Bridge pretty heavily (using CS4 now), and to be honest, I love it. I’ve seen a few negative comments here, and I feel they are quite unfounded (maybe public awareness of Bridge’s full feature set is the thing that needs to be improved?) The addition of an optional system service in CS4 is by far and away the biggest factor in my decision to move to a primarily-Bridge workflow. (Although….it crashes your Adobe Update service…Might need to take a look at that.)
From a standpoint of trying to use Bridge more completely, the biggest hurdle I’ve come across is one that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere, which surprises me. It’s the lack of file-browser plug-ins. This, I should think, would be the single most important work that Bridge needs. When, for example, I download stock photos…how do they get tagged? I’ve got to make a conscious effort to navigate to all the folders I may have added to in a day and make sure I tag anything I may need. Or, how about when I create my own content? Whether from the creative suite, or from something like a 3D application…when I get the standard OS save dialogue, there’s generally not an easy way to put that extra data in (never, from a non-cs app).
So, getting what I need *out* of Bridge is wonderful, but getting it *into* Bridge is a substantial barrier to adoption. It’s extra work.
If I could ask for the moon, how about an optional way to pull the metadata and/or keywords panels into save dialogue boxes…something that lets me setup my content for Bridge from within it’s originating program. Using a better browser shouldn’t require more legwork :)
Thanks for the open call for suggestions; I’d be happy to discuss more!
-Jim

Duncan Baines — 6:08 AM on January 26, 2009

1. I would like font previews of at least all the letters and numbers.
2. I like how on sharepoint any newly created (last 24 hours) files have a ‘new’bright green logo next to them. This makes it incredibly easy to spot new files out of a list of say 100 and I would like this functionality on Bridge – perhaps colour the box around the thumbnail in the content panel a different colour for files new/modified in the last 24 hours.

Look at Microsoft Expression 2 (which used to be iView Media Pro). It is fantastic and unless MS junks it up as they’re known to do, than it’ll continue to be more useful.
Why? Tons of ways. Most importantly is I need to see images and docs in sub directories all as once.[That’s possible in BR CS3/CS4: choose View->Show Items from Subfolders. –J.]
It is very easy to use. I never use Bridge as it is slow and cumbersome. Clunky even.
iView, er… Expression… could really, use improvements that Adobe could avoid in Bridge.

Most important, as so many have said – speed and stability. CS4 is much much better, but don’t rest on the laurels.
After that, it would be nice to fix view settings to folders, so one can be in date order downwards while another is in alpha upwards. At the moment I get quite irritated changing from one to another.
It would also be nice to have some kind of “to-do” note attached to each file, that is visible on browsing and also triggers a reminder when opening the file.
Great ideas already above, but those are my top two. (Apart from speed, speed, stability, speed and stability).

Most important, as so many have said – speed and stability. CS4 is much much better, but don’t rest on the laurels.
After that, it would be nice to fix view settings to folders, so one can be in date order downwards while another is in alpha upwards. At the moment I get quite irritated changing from one to another.
It would also be nice to have some kind of “to-do” note attached to each file, that is visible on browsing and also triggers a reminder when opening the file.
Great ideas already above, but those are my top two. (Apart from speed, speed, stability, speed and stability).

sheckyboy — 11:11 AM on January 26, 2009

Come up with one catalog approach for all of you products. Currently using Elements 7 with over 15K pictures catalogued and tagged. Don’t want to risk that investment when moving to LR for example. But all three seem to use different catalog approaches and have different features. Why not one single catalog storage engine. Then different interfaces for the different products (if even needed). At the very least, make it EASY to move between them with no loss of functionality.

Alan Gilbertson — 11:37 AM on January 26, 2009

My number one petty annoyance with Bridge CS3 and CS4 is the lack of “Place in…” in the context menu. As a designer, I work with ID, PS, IA, DW and FL. I place files many times a day, and it drives me crazy that I have to go to the main menu to do it. This one is such a no-brainer, given that the CS is all about workflow, and is so easy to implement, that it astounded me when it wasn’t in CS4. (This is so logical to me, that even after four years I still often right-click when I want to place a file from Bridge.
Alan’s Maxim: “The most user-friendly thing you can do with any computer system is speed it up.” As several people have mentioned, caching and parsing thumbnails, especially in larger image folders, is painfully slow. 1) Couldn’t this be implemented as a background/idle operation as in Windows Search/OSX Spotlight, Gridiron Flow, or the new Norton Antivirus? 2) There has to be a way to make the Loupe show a 100% view faster. 3) See other notes below.
I would love to see the app stabilized, especially in the output module, which crashes Bridge frequently under Vista.
The UI bug others have mentioned (and I reported a month or two ago) absolutely needs to be fixed. Panels that resize themselves with abandon are surely not working as designed.
There are memory leakage issues that remain unfixed, so that periodically one has to close and restart Bridge.
The new contact sheet implementation is ‘orrible compared with the CS3 “InDesign Contact Sheet” — now one has no control over the output. (The options are not “control”; they are severe limitations. I don’t want a PDF; I want an INDD. I flip back to Bridge CS3 just so I can create contact sheets in InDesign and modify from there. I shouldn’t have to do that.)
Keyword search for collections is unusable because it has no option to prevent substring matches (“Lea” the given name will match “Lea” “Leaf” “Flea” “Pleasure” etc.), yet this is the most potentially useful area for auto-collection.
Keyboard shortcut preferences are a glaring omission.
Bridge needs a catalog function that includes offline drives and removable media. This moves it somewhat into DAM, but isn’t that what it is, really?
I’m baffled that I can’t just type in a bunch of keywords. Selecting checkboxes is very slow and tedious, hard to manipulate and very hard to edit/verify/correct. Then there are the KWs on the right (input by Bridge user) and all the other existing KWs that don’t show up in the editable KW panel, only in the Filter panel. That cripples KW handling in Bridge.
Loupe is okay, but why does it almost always show a 200% view? Why does it ever show a 200% view, for that matter?
Bridge should accept drag and drop from other Windows apps (think “Outlook attachments”) [Perhaps this is Vista-specific. I’ve not tested it on XP.]
I guess there’s a good reason Bridge can’t preview HTML pages, but it should.
A real address bar would be a huge plus.
Whatever the Bridge team does, DO NOT lose the browser-like forward/back functionality. I love that I can use my mouse forward/back buttons to navigate Bridge. Keep the breadcrumbs, too!
Web developers will bless you if you allow lower frame rates for previews, rather than restricting us to the often too-high frame rates of 30fps and up. 15fps, even 12fps, is not unusual in web environments.
Allow adding keywords to “All files plus all subfolders” so we can tag all the files for a particular client or project quickly and simply.

jimhere — 12:16 PM on January 26, 2009

I agree with Jeff Duran about iView. Since I started using it in 1998-99, there simply has been no need to find a “better way”. It already puts all relevant files (including fonts) and metadata right there in any sortable way. And they’re all open-able in any Adobe app. Bridge has it’s own UI layout, I guess. I’ve dabbled with it since it first appeared, but why re-configure my work habits just because it’s part of the suite? I suppose the Microsoft angle is a negative for iView, er… Expression…

James Conway — 12:33 PM on January 26, 2009

Photographer and Software instructor (relevant products I own/teach: Aperture, Lightroom, CS4 Suite, iView, Portfolio)
Personally I’m not happy with any of the asset management programs on the market so I would like to see Bridge turned into a real asset management program with offline catalogs. I’d be fine if this were an extra or optional mode or window, so that Bridge could still function as a file browser. I shoot approx. 30,000 images a year, I need a solution that can handle a huge number of files, quickly.
Let’s use the “Steve Jobs” trick. Steve asks (himself) what people hate about their current product, then creates a product that solves that problem. He did that with the personal computer, the phone and the mp3 player and look how those worked out.
What do I “hate” about all the current asset management products on the market?
– too slow
– unreliable/unstable across network
– writing metadata back to files is unavailable or restricted or inconvenient (in everything except Bridge, which is why Bridge is still the first, most important step of my workflow.)
– size limit to catalogs restrict number of elements in a catalog. I have lots of stuff. I need to search it all.
Or, I was thinking, maybe the Bridge can be the “input” step to another product to fulfill the dream of “one asset management program to rule them all.”

Speed and stability.
I’m not sure why some people mention Lightroom as a replacement since Lightroom only shows you what’s in your LR library. Bridge allows you to look at files regardless of where they are.

somerset — 1:56 PM on January 26, 2009

6. (see 1-5 in previous comment) Ability to preview brushes, symbols, shapes and any other image-based assets from PS, AI, etc. I keep downloading free assets from the internet, and often don’t use them because I forget what’s in each file, and it takes to long to add them in the panels with in the programs.
7. (I think this is fixed in CS4, but just in case it isn’t…) User management of files generating errors: often I’d open a file in ID make a change or two, save and close, then decide to rename the file in Bridge. Bridge would pop up an error saying the file is in use by another program (which it isn’t) and won’t rename the file. I’d have to exit out of ID to be able to rename the file in Bridge, which is a pain when I have other documents open I don’t want to have to close and reopen.
Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to provide feedback! Love the blog :-D

Adrian Q — 1:58 PM on January 26, 2009

If the next bridge had just one enhancement, I’d be ecstatic if it had a better mechanism for assigning keywords. This is by far the most painful, slow and tedious part of my workflow! In particular, I’d love it if I never had to leave the keyboard to assign keywords to one or more photos.
Select a photo or photos, hit a shortcut key to bring up a little dialog with an add keywords field (plus maybe a “remove keywords” field too!). Type a couple letters into the field, and it autosuggests some existing values. Hit enter and it completes the keyword and lets you start typing the next one.
Also, it might be too much to ask for but a simple keywords view with open fields similar to Flickr’s would be awesome.

I use Bridge CS4 most of the time, but it would be great to have the preset and preview system from Lightroom integrated. I know you can have develop presets in Bridge, but it’s a pain compared to how Lightroom goes about it. It seems crazy for me to fork out $300 just to get access to what should already be in Bridge. Merge the two. Lightroom for the hobbyists, and Photoshop with Lightroom built into Bridge for the Pros.

Jeffrey Ignarro — 4:49 PM on January 26, 2009

I’m just going to echo some others. CS4 is a huge improvement but;
1- Speed; My main computer has eight cores. Bridge can use all it wants while building previews. CS4 doesn’t use all the resources it could.
2- Workspaces; I like the improvements in workspaces but I really wish that the ones I create could be locked down. Now I have to make a concious effort to switch workspaces in a specific order so I don’t mess up my window locations. I also don’t like that the thumbnails don’t lock in size with the workspaces.
Yep, those are my worst gripes. A vast improvement from CS3.

To add to my previous comments:
Again, CS4, Vista 64.
Path bar as suggested by others would be a really useful addition. Typing or pasting and also having it “live” ie predicts the path based on typing as per the Win OS.
A “directory up” icon would be useful, too. Was a mistake by MS to remove this in the Vista UI compared to XP. Often times people use such structures that “up” rather than “back” is very useful and it’s more intuitive than looking at a flatline list of the directory structure and clicking part of it. Ideally, UI navigation options would be customisable – that would really sort things out.

Coerv — 4:49 AM on January 27, 2009

I’m using bridge CS3.
I’d find it cool if the Tag-Panel could be improved. If you move a Tag to another Subtag, it always leaves a duplicate at the old place with the name written italic. Thats confusing.
And there should be better ways to organize and apply tags to the photos. If you have a lot of pictures it takes a lot of time to tag them.
It would be also nice, if you have bought pictures from a Service like Getty-Images or Shutterstock, that you could draw tags from there.
And if there will be an upload function for flickr or ipernity the bridge tags could be uploaded, so flickr or ipernity understands them as tags.

Improved stability would be great. I often crash when moving files around from within Bridge. Often times while moving files into another folder, or to the trash from within Bridge.

yachts99 — 2:17 AM on January 28, 2009

Bridge CS4 version. Subject: Don’t resize tabbed windows in Flash when opening (adding) a new ActionScript file from Bridge.
I use Bridge with Version Cue for Flash projects and opening ActionScript files from within Bridge opens them correctly in Flash as a tab. I often then resize (upwards) the newly opened window as I have a large monitor.
However any subsequent AS file opened from Bridge joins the tabbed window in Flash but resizes the tabbed window back down to a default size. I then have to resize the window back up again!

Coerv — 4:30 AM on January 28, 2009

Another thing that I would appreciate would be the ability to filter a folder before it has loaded all its images.
I have some folders with really many pictures and when I want to narrow them down I have to wait forever until all the pictures have loaded, just to filter most of them away.

Jeffrey Ignarro — 10:36 AM on January 28, 2009

I’d also like, at least the option, to have Bridge only show full thumbnail boxes. It seems like, whenever I do a lot of scrolling up and down I end up with partial thumbnails on top and on the bottom which are pretty useless. Look at the way Lightroom functions in this regard.[Try the new “Grid Lock” option in CS4: click the little icon to the right of the thumbnail slider, or choose View->Grid Lock. –J.]

Jeffrey Ignarro — 10:40 AM on January 28, 2009

Okay, I just looked at Lightroom. forget my comment about looking at how Lightroom handles its thumbnail boxes while scrolling. (Though Lightroom’s scrolling is still much better than Bridge’s)

Bridge CS4 needs to be able to display Photoshop files that are saved in the iPhoto 09 Library !!
If you do a search for an iPhoto event that contains photoshop files they don’t even show up!! This is a Huge bug, in fact it totally makes Bridge useless. Virtually all the images I work with are Photoshop files.
I noticed that Bridge wouldn’t even show layered tif files either. So I don’t even think there is a work around to this problem. I really hope they fix this in a point release I can’t imagine going for over a year with this bug.

Jeffrey Ignarro — 12:33 PM on January 28, 2009

[Try the new “Grid Lock” option in CS4: click the little icon to the right of the thumbnail slider, or choose View->Grid Lock. –J.]
Outstanding! Wish I’d found that earlier. Thanks.

Ann Shelbourne — 12:34 PM on January 28, 2009

I use Bridge CS4 constantly and am delighted with its greatly improved stability and speed and, particularly, its integration with ACR 5.3.
I do have the sense to limit the number of files in a folder to under 200 which is probably why speed is not an issue for me.
Lightroom is not an issue for me either because, even though I am a professional photographer, I have almost everything that I need in CS4 Bridge/ACR/Photoshop and find nothing in Lightroom which holds much value for me and its GUI is cumbersome and slow.
If we could have DAM capability in Bridge that would make it, coupled with the Creative Suite, the complete answer for Imaging professionals and would obviate the need for Lightroom entirely — except as a sort of “Photoshop Elements for Photographers”.
Additional Improvements that I would like to see in Bridge CS5:
MUCH greater User Customization capability in the Output Panel — both for PDFs and for Web Galleries.
By poking around in the Library … Bridge CS4 Extensions; and duplicating and editing (in GoLive or Dreamweaver) some of the xml templates from 07lightroomgallery/Styles in the Output Modules; I have been able to do a bit (such as adding a custom image frame, fonts and duration etc.) but this sort of thing needs to be available to the User directly in the Output Panel.
Also it should be possible to caption images in a Gallery from any selected Metadata category — even from multiple categories.
The User also needs to be able to Save their new templates (both for Web Galleries and PDFs) directly from Bridge without having to dive into code-editing duplicate templates in Dreamweaver!!

Ann Shelbourne — 12:59 PM on January 28, 2009

>Bridge CS4 needs to be able to display Photoshop files that are saved in the iPhoto 09 Library>
Bridge CS4 can do that on my G5 running OSX 10.4.11.
Are you navigating to the correct iPhoto folder?
Actually, I find no reason to put ANYthing through iPhoto or in the iPhoto Library.
Even if you do use one of the iLife applications, you can populate it from anywhere on your HDs so there is no reason to get bogged down in the endless maze of iPhoto folders.

One more thing: I’d like it if Bridge CS5 supported (and allowed) the flags in Lightroom. Thanks to all involved.

Richard Henley — 6:24 PM on January 28, 2009

Additionally, as it appears no one has mentioned this –
I’d like to be able to rotate the view of an image in the Preview panel WITHOUT being forced to write metadata out to the file to do so.
I’d just like to rotate the view itself.

In any case, you’ve consistently raised an alarm that the non-updated copy of Opera is a security risk. For that to be true, a customer would have to take the time to install a script that would cause Bridge to display a generic HTML browsing view, after which s/he’d use that view to go cruising from site to site. (In other words, someone would have to modify Bridge to function as their HTML browser.) Know anyone who’s done that? Me neither.
Therefore there’s no attack vector via Opera. The code lies dormant except when Bridge goes to one of a few walled gardens (e.g. previewing Web galleries in the Output module). –J.

Nonsense. The lack of clue in that statement tells me you’ve not even seriously considered the problems of a hidden email and IRC client on a system.
That’s what Opera is ALSO John, AS SHIPPED. It’s an easily found, (/Applications/Adobe Bridge CS4/Adobe Bridge CS4/Contents/MacOS/Opera.app on every standard CS4 config) unconfigured, unmanaged email and IRC client, that is trivial to configure in the user’s own preferences.[Trivial to configure by whom? It would have to be either A) the user, who is thus opting to dig up and use an app that’s hidden inside Bridge, or B) a malicious piece of code, which–having that level of access to your machine–could already harm you in lots of more straightforward ways. –J.]
Congratulations, there’s now a trival way to shove data off that box at a furious pace, in relative quiet.[Again, who would do this shoving? The customer, or the malicious code?Why would a customer choose to hurt him or herself? Are you saying the following: 1) people would be knowledgeable & motivated enough to seek out and use the embedded Opera as a standalone app, thus demonstrating sophistication and determination; 2) would simultaneously lack info about Opera vulnerabilities to malicious sites; 3) would then go and view these sites; and 4) would then have their machines hijacked?Or are you saying that someone could write a program that would manipulate/modify the settings of this embedded Opera, then entice people to download and execute this program, then use the corrupted Opera to start sending data off affected machines? Why would they go through that level of Rube Goldberg contortions when there are a million easier ways to harm those who’ve supplied such a level of trust? –J.]
You really, REALLY need to get away from the idea that obscurity = security, and that just because it’s mildly hard to find and double-click, that somehow, there’s no problem, and therefore, Adobe has no responsibility whatsoever to take even the SMALLEST steps to attempt to lock down the software they *sneak* on to your computer and network without any sort of warning or notice.
I cannot easily describe how thoroughly depressing it is to see such a cavalier attitude towards security actively defended by someone in your position, and you are doing much to justify my resistance to deploying CS4.[There’s no difference between CS3 and CS4 re: Opera, so it shouldn’t be a factor in your decisions about deploying the latter.Bridge has been shipping with Opera embedded in the current form for nearly four years. In that time I have not encountered a single customer who has sought out the embedded Opera and used it as a standalone browser/email client/IRC app. (Why would they, instead of downloading and using a more modern version?)I likewise haven’t encountered anyone who uses Bridge for general-purpose Web browsing (by leveraging Opera within it). Neither have you, or you surely would have mentioned it when I’ve asked (repeatedly).You say I’m being cavalier. I’m saying you’ve never, despite any number of good-faith requests for clarification, explained to my why someone would end up exposed to a problem in the real world.Eventually Opera will be replaced by WebKit. (I hoped that would happen in CS4.) In the meantime, nothing will happen (besides, inevitably, you calling me more names). –J.]

yachts99 — 1:15 AM on January 29, 2009

Bridge CS4 version. Subject: Don’t resize tabbed windows in Flash when opening (adding) a new ActionScript file from Bridge.
I use Bridge with Version Cue for Flash projects and opening ActionScript files from within Bridge opens them correctly in Flash as a tab. I often then resize (upwards) the newly opened window as I have a large monitor.
However any subsequent AS file opened from Bridge joins the tabbed window in Flash but resizes the tabbed window back down to a default size. I then have to resize the window back up again!

Travholt — 2:55 AM on January 29, 2009

As other have mentioned: Preview all pages in an Indesign document. And I would also like to see bigger Indesign previews, like PDFs. (I’m using CS3, so disregard that if this is possible in CS4).
The coolest would be if you could see thumbnails of all the pages of an Indesign document right in the Content pane. I realise that might be hard to do, though …[We can do all this, but we need InDesign to start saving multiple page previews in INDD files. (Currently they do this only with INDT, i.e. template, files.) That would mean some overhead when saving files from ID, and the files would become a bit larger (to incorporate multiple preview bitmaps). Could you live with that? Presumably the behavior would be governed by a preference. –J.]

I was loking for my next note on Bridge improvements and came across something I wrote a while back for forums when Beta Testing CS4. Which oddly enough also happened to be about Caching – but security is the main concern here. I’m not that obsessed with caching! :-)
Now in CS2 Bridge would either do centralised cache or distributed cache.
I liked distributed as the cache was wherever the images were, so if things got moved or archived, the cache went with them. Plus it had the added benefit of not clogging up a folder on usually your OS hard drive and if cache needed purging, it was usually only for that single folder, so no tedious rebuilding.
CS3 changed this and even if you selected distributed, centralised caching stil took place and to make this even more annoying you still had to tick that you wanted caching to folders [b]every single time[/b]. Not only that, it was so slow and awful, I virtually gave up on Bridge.
CS4 seems to be nice and fast again for general browsing, but still keeps asking you about caching to folders each time. Does it simply ignore what was stated in prefs?
Now out of curiosity I looked in the Bridge main cache and it appears to be caching actual jpeg thumbnails for each file at each size, so I now have 3 versions of each image in the main cache plus two bridge Cache files in each folder. I’d rather have just the individual folder cache and that’s it.
Now looking at a folder of desktop imageson PC of 131M, it produces folder of 46M, 31M, 2.2M and another 33M in the folder itself, so my cache for that single folder is 84% as big again!!
Admittedly it should be more efficient for larger files but still, that’s an worrying amount of space being consumed.
A couple of things sprung to mind – obviously caching consumes a lot of space, but more worryingly is the security aspect. Imagine, you’re working on designs for PS CS5 and your laptop is stolen, now even though the files that are under wraps are on main server and not on laptop itself, a quick sift through the cache and all the screenshots are there to be seen by anyone with ease. So if you work with sensitive [or embarassing images!] you will have to purge cache all the time, if you even realise there’s an issue. And it’s not just image files. PDF front pages will be also be revealed. So confidential documents may be compromised.
Now I am using CS4 under an NDA and if I was going to take my Mac to get a tweak at Apple store, I would simply remove the software and the installers. But all the screenshots for bug reports/feature requests will be there for any nosey person trying to debug machine to to find, as the cache has all the images in a folder labled Photoshop CS4 Screenshots. Easily stumbled upon if using spotlight. Now I know it’s an issue, it’s not problem to delete, if I remember! Which I’m unlikely to do in reality.
Whilst writing this I’m caching 28Gb of images in about 6 folders from a job to test Bridge, including 100% images to save time when selecting/rejecting [using Mac this time]. And I have to say, it took some time and produced a whopping 2.4Gb of centralised cache, nearly 10%! As I have a few TB of data, that’s a fair chunk of HD space to find space for. It would fill my MacHD no problem with the stock drive. Though I couldn’t find any cache in folders even though set to do so [Hidden files were turned on].
So if Cache was with the images in a subfolder and only there, that would solve security issues. But would cause no end of recursive caching as the cache produces images itself, unless folders were named by bridge so as to be ignored, when caching subfolders.

John Weber — 7:11 AM on January 29, 2009

I’d like to see some sort of “anchoring” system like some web pages have. That way if I’m drilled down into a folder, go to another and come back, I’m not starting at the top of the window again having to drill down where I was previously.
Maybe if an item in the first folder had been selected when returning to that folder that image is at the top of the window.
This kind of anchoring idea could be subject to a modifier key being used when selecting a folder instead of it happening every time.

Claudio — 9:38 AM on January 29, 2009

I am using Bridge CS4 and I don’t understand why the “Get photos from camera…” in Bridge is different than the “Import photos from device…” in Lightroom. Shouldn’t they be exactly the same.[Ideally, yes, but the apps use different frameworks, languages, etc. Sometimes sharing code is much tougher than you’d imagine. –J.]
For example,the file renaming feature which is much more feature rich in Lightroom than it is in Bridge CS4.
Thank you for asking for feedback.

I use 3 different DAM softwares because each does one thing the others don’t. These things may all be available in Bridge, if so I apologize, but I haven’t found them yet:
1) Ability to select images and choose print. Have Bridge use DDE or whatever else to make it happen. Have different configurations available for number of images per page, etc. (I do this in Thumbsplus)
2) Allow a sort on folders similar to Picassa (sort by modifed date). Not just images within a folder, but folders themselves.
3) Copy/apply all the keywords from one image(s) directly to another (a search for this is what lead me to your blogpost.) So it copies the cumulative keywords from one or more images and applies them to another (or several): ie: copy all keywords from images 1, 2 and 3 and apply them images 4 and 5. Having modifiers would make this even cooler, such as ‘apply all keywords that 1, 2 and 3 have IN COMMON, to images 4 and 5 THAT THEY DON’T ALREADY HAVE.’ Something like that. Then I could kick Picassa and ThumbsPlus to the curb and really love on Bridge.

Ken C — 12:48 PM on February 02, 2009

Using CS4, first real foray into Bridge.
Used BreezeBrowser and Downloader Pro previously (still use them for downloading photos and batch renaming) Switching to Bridge for the better UI.
Things I’d like to see in the future:
– Histogram support
– More job & file naming options for the downloader (see Downloader Pro and its billions of tags)
– Yes, more speed. Jumping from large folder to large folder can reduce speed to a crawl.
– Changing label text in preferences shouldn’t cause all the labels previuously assigned to files to go white.
– Way to assign multiple keywords at once (like a string of keywords seperated by “;”)
– Keep the folders panel folder hierarchy intact switching to a collection for ease of returning to the folders.
– Love the rotating image preview. Would be nice to have a shortcut key to see metadata (and a histogram!) while in that mode.

David V. — 10:57 AM on February 03, 2009

To confirm the worries of John C. Welch…
Last night an Opera browser suddenly popped up on my desktop to start a BitTorrent transmission.[Are you saying that Opera launched itself and attempted to start a transmission? –J.]
I was quite surprised since I didn’t think I had ever installed Opera. Turns out it was there in my Adobe Bridge CS3 folder: Opera.app!
(I’m guessing that some changes I made to my installation of Transmission made it unavailable as the preferred BitTorrent client, and Opera took over from there when a script of mine opened a torrent file.)
That seems quite wrong/bad to me…[It sounds like Opera got registered as a browser on your system, and I agree that shouldn’t happen (it’s not an intended scenario). I can talk to the Bridge team about what’s going on, though as I noted in the future Opera will be replaced by WebKit.In the present, is there a risk that a script running on your machine could fire up the embedded copy of Opera, then send it to a malicious Web site and/or initiate IRC traffic? I don’t know the extent to which Opera can be driven through scripting, but if a malicious individual wanted to cause damage & had enough access to your machine to run scripts, wouldn’t they just cause damage much more directly? –J.]

Dan Smart — 8:43 PM on February 03, 2009

The way Mac OS works means that the presence of Opera.App on the machine “registers it as a browser”, nothing else needs to be done. Any URL type, or file type that is handled by Opera, but isn’t handled by another app will automatically be delegated to opera. This is why having an unpatched copy of Opera on the machine is a massive security hole, and the fact that you didn’t know that, is why you shouldn’t be commenting on the security implications.

Amongst the whinging, the fact that Opera is actually the most secure of the browsers, seems to have ignored.
FF likes to shout about how secure it is, yet at times it has been leakier than IE.
I’ve used Opera since the 90s and have never, ever had any security issues with it.
Not only that, it’s waaaay better than the other browsers, who are constantly copying/stealing it’s features, though about 4/8 years later!

shawn — 2:39 PM on February 21, 2009

This is more of an ACR improvement, but since I use Bridge/ACR together…
When cropping a RAW image in ACR, I usually choose to upsize the file’s crop size under “Workflow Options” at the bottom of the ACR window. However, when I go back in Bridge and do a batch JPG conversion of all of my files, it will use same crop size settings for ALL images, not just the cropped ones. There’s no way to individually set the resolution for images using ACR. That should definitely be fixed.[I’ve passed along your feedback. –J.]

I just installed CS4, reluctantly. I was just fine with CS3, but needed to upgrade to work with the RAW files from my Canon G10. I’ve been using Bridge as my file browser for the past few years, and have been perfectly happy with it. However, Bridge in CS4 is doing something that’s making me crazy and I can’t find any way to correct it. When I give a vertical image a star-rating, CS4 Bridge is auto-rotating it to horizontal and I can’t find any way to make it stop. The rotate buttons and rotate in the pull-down menus aren’t highlighted and won’t work. I’m about to chuck it in the trash and order Lightroom. Anybody have any idea what’s going on?
Thanks!
Richard

I too would like CS4 Bridge to be faster.
I just an amateur. I just started using CS4 instead of ELEMENTS. My real problem is with KEYWORDS. I would like to be able to change a keyword and all files using the keyword be updated WITHOUT having to have them selected.

Silvano Gai — 7:23 AM on March 20, 2009

For me is all about integration with Version Cue.
CS4 is horrible, a big step back from CS3. I want a Bridge that can connect to CS3 and CS4 servers, that really allow a workflow in a mixed environment CS3 / CS4.

I use multiple computers and the one thing that bothers me the most is that you can’t copy ‘collections’ between computers. I mean, you do all the work on one computer, then it should be able to just copy that collection (given all your pictures are on a external harddrive) to another computer.
For the rest… Bridge/Photoshop CS4 totally changed my workflow… Great work John!!!!
Thanks from Switzerland

mw — 10:16 AM on April 15, 2009

It’s likely I’ve missed this.. but in the web gallery output preview appearance selector — I need a 100% setting for preview instead of the medium/lrg/xlrg. Have I missed it? (CS4)
Thankyou!

Kevin — 7:38 PM on April 22, 2009

I am using Bridge CS4 and the very simple feature I would like to see is Bridge re-open all the windows I had open when I closed it — sort of like Firefox’s “Save and Quit” feature.
I frequently use Bridge with multiple windows open, but Bridge only reopens the last active window.

tunghoy — 4:33 PM on May 05, 2009

I’m using Bridge 3.0.0.464 (CS4), and it lacks the same, basic (IMO) feature as the older versions: the ability to rename a shortcut in the Favorites list. Just the shortcut, not the actual item — the way you can rename a shortcut on the Desktop. I already asked this a year ago about version 2 in one of the Adobe forums.
Example of why this is necessary: I have a folder containing web sites of multiple clients. Each folder has a sub-folder called images. So there’s site1\images, site2\images, site3\images and so on.
When I place each of the Images folders in my favorites list, the list then contains a bunch of shortcuts all called images. I can’t tell one from another unless I start clicking them to see the contents or looking at the row of breadcrumbs.
One of Bridge’s competitors is ACDSee. It does an excellent job of this. I can rename my favorites anything I want, and the actual folders that the favorites point to are unaffected. (Bridge beats ACDSee in the number of file types and associations it recognizes.)
So I don’t need any more bells and whistles from Bridge. I just need this basic feature, and I’m amazed that nobody else has needed it.

tunghoy — 4:44 PM on May 05, 2009

Sorry, one more thing:
@Somerset — right on the money with request #1: the ability to copy and paste folder paths.
I’d like to see this ability in all Adobe applications. Microsoft Office open and ssve dialogs do this very well.

nippy — 8:36 AM on May 12, 2009

functionality like Gridiron Flow would be great. Gridiron have got a really great idea but the software itself is a system hog of epic proportion.

spitfire_ch — 3:00 PM on May 28, 2009

I’d love to see a more flexible quick search feature. Right now, when you enter Egypt Obelisk it will only look for a keyword “Egypt Obelisk” instead of looking for files tagged with “Egypt” and/or “Obelisk”. If you want to look for multiple keywords, you have to used the advanced search, which is not very convenient. It would be much nicer to have an AND connection by default if you enter multiple keywords, but also to be able to manually enter OR.
And for the advanced search: It would be a huge dream to be able to use SQL-like queries to things, that are simply not possible right now. (like either the first two criteria must be met or the third is met).

Personally, I’d like bridge to improve as a file viewer. It lacks basic image viewing functionality such as the ability to zoom in and out of an image.
It also seems to lack basic file browser functionality such as the ability to type in a file path.
I just think Adobe should go back to the basics with bridge, and really polish up it’s core functionality, like Microsoft have done with Windows 7. It’s too easy to get caught up looking for the next big time saving feature, while overlooking the basic functionality of the application.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide input. I currently use CS4 Bridge. It would be great to have face recognition software in Bridge (like Picassa) to sort through numerous images and automatically assign predetermined keywords to the images based on the results.

Lonny B. — 3:54 AM on December 02, 2009

Thank you for the opportunity to provide input. I currently use CS4 Bridge. It would be great to have face recognition software in Bridge (like Picassa) to sort through numerous images and automatically assign predetermined keywords to the images based on the results.

Chris H — 3:07 PM on January 21, 2010

Using CS4 … and in common with previous versions, I cannot use Bridge’s keyword addition because it sorts the input into alpha order (which is now what I require for the agency I supply). Just offer me a control to turn this ‘feature’ off …

Brian K — 12:28 PM on January 24, 2010

Yes, please add hierarchical collections. I have a dozen collections for each project, resulting in a huge linear list. I want to be able to sort them into folders.

I’ve noticed my “Full screen” previews (spacebar) are “soft” in Adobe Bridge CS5. They were not in Bridge CS4. I have to open the images in Camera Raw to see the effects of sharpness, etc. I think this was an early issue on CS4 as well, that somehow got rectified. Any ideas?

I found my particular solution: I opened the image in Camera RAw (6.0). From the BASIC palette pullout (upper right-hand corner) I discovered and applied the menu item: Update DNG Previews. I selected the option “Embedded JPEG Previews: Full SIze.”
Give it a go!
rick

One frustration with Bridge CS5 is the Export to Social Media options simply do not show up if one selects international english when you install. There is nothing to warn you of this during the instal and nothing in the help documentation. I found a video on youtube which has a long and painful workaround http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5MOwu9cNw4
Hi John, I don’t know if you are listening but it would be great to know the background to this problem. Someone mentioned licensing but how come Lightroom doesn’t have this problem?